One glance was sufficient to make her more puzzled than before. Her father sat at his desk, his chair tilted back, his long legs crossed; the toe of his right boot was quietly kicking the big waste-paper basket in front of him. But what puzzled his daughter more than this attitude was the fact that the upward twitch of his moustache showed that Lucas Etherton was smiling — smiling, so it seemed, at his own thoughts. Yet — how could a man smile who had just been called dishonourable, to his very face?
She glanced from him to the old baronet. At any other time she would have been amused. Sir Cheville Stanbury was noted in Lithersdale as being a dandy, and the best-dressed man in the neighbourhood, but Letty had never seen him in such gay garments before, and she wondered if his festive appearance had anything to do with his engagement to Mlle de Coulanges, the fascinating governess at the vicarage. Sir Cheville was a spare, medium-sized man, who made the most of every one of his inches and held himself invariably square and erect.
Everything about him was naturally aggressive — the glance of his eye, the cock of his chin, the upward twirl of his gray, carefully kept moustache, the very set of his shoulders. And now all this was set off in a faultlessly cut suit of summer tweeds finished by a tall white hat with a black band, white gloves with black stitches, white gaiters over patent leather boots — a vivid contrast to Lucas Etherton’s shaggy figure in an old blue suit liberally adorned with patches of grease and shreds and slivers of wool.
Why did not her father speak? Why did he sit there, evidently jingling the money and keys in his pockets, certainly kicking the waste-paper basket, certainly smiling in that queer, provoking way? This puzzled Letty beyond belief; it evidently puzzled Sir Cheville too, for after a long pause he turned from the window through which he was affecting to look, picked up the eyeglass which dangled from his neck by a thin gold chain, fixed it in his right eye and stared at the man he was reproaching.
“I repeat — what does it all mean?” he said testily. “And I’ll supplement that by another question. Are you going to repay me my loan, Mr. Etherton? I concluded it was for a few weeks — it has stretched into twelve months. I want my money. I am resettling my affairs. Why don’t you speak, sir?”
Lucas Etherton tilted his chair farther back and looked up at the ceiling. Even then, to the hearer who was with him and to the listener behind the curtain, it seemed as if he was unnecessarily slow in answering.
“Different folk have different notions, Sir Cheville,” he said. “When you were kind enough to lend me that money, I told you I wanted it until I’d got something fixed up. You said — I’m giving you your exact words — ‘Oh, any time, Etherton, any time — suit your own convenience.’ I took you at your word. It isn’t convenient to repay you yet.”
“But damme, sir, you must have known that I was using a mere figure of speech!” exclaimed Sir Cheville. “A man does say something of that sort when — when he lends money to another man. Mere politeness, don’t you know! But — one doesn’t mean it!”
Lucas Etherton chuckled.
“Ah, but, you see, I thought you did!” he retorted. “I’d always understood that you were one of those men who never say anything but what they mean.”
Sir Cheville made a final contortion, dropped his monocle, and tapped his smart walking-cane on the floor.
“You’re trifling with me, sir!” he said angrily. “You know as well as I do that the loan was a temporary one. Will you repay me — at once?”
“Can’t!” answered Lucas Etherton laconically. “Haven’t got it!”
“When will you have it?” demanded Sir Cheville. “Fix a date!”
“Couldn’t!” said Etherton, almost indifferently. “Might be soon — might be longer. Can’t say at all today. I’m speaking as I do because you’re talking about this matter as an ordinary, common creditor might. You’re talking about a debt of honour between two gentlemen as if it were a vulgar trade account, and you were the butcher or the candlestick maker. If—”
Sir Cheville, who had grown very red and angry during the manufacturer’s last few words, suddenly stepped up to the desk and smote his fist on it.
“Damme, sir!” he vociferated. “How dare you talk to me like that? Honour, indeed; I’d like to know what you know—”
“About honour?” interrupted Etherton. “Perhaps quite as much as yourself. You lent me a sum of money, willingly, to be paid back at my convenience. Now you come and demand it—”
“I’ll tell you what it is!” exclaimed Sir Cheville abruptly. “If you don’t pay me my money by ten o’clock tomorrow morning, I’ll instruct Birch to serve you with a writ! That’s final!”
Etherton looked up from his desk, and it seemed to his daughter that a new mood showed itself in his face.
“Birch?” he said slowly. “Ah! Now, do you mind telling me if you ever told Birch that I owe you this money?”
“No, I have not, sir!” retorted Sir Cheville indignantly. “I’m not in the habit of telling my solicitor that I lend anything — as I have done, more than once. But I shall tell him — now!”
“Don’t!” said Etherton, with a peculiar glance. “Don’t! If you please.”
“Why not, sir?” demanded Sir Cheville.
Etherton looked hard at his creditor for several seconds.
“Because it would upset certain plans of mine,” he answered. “That’s all.”
Sir Cheville pulled himself up and stared back.
“Plans! What plans?” he asked. “Tell me!”
“No!” replied Etherton. “Certainly not! Not if I owed you fifty thousand. And I’d like to know why you come upon me suddenly with a demand for five? You’re a very rich man, Sir Cheville, and you don’t want it.”
Sir Cheville turned round to the window and for a moment looked out in silence. Suddenly he turned again to the manufacturer.
“Do you know what’s being said about you, Etherton?” he asked in a low voice. “It’s rumoured that you’re in Queer Street! Now, if I am in pretty comfortable circumstances myself — well, even if I am a rich, a very rich man, I’m not going to lose my money. I have other people to consider. Now, it seems to be a fact that you can’t lay your hands on five thousand pounds, in spite of your apparently big business, and so on. So—”
Etherton suddenly lifted his hand as if to command silence. He pointed to the curtain which shut off his clerk’s room, and then called quietly:
“Pike! Are you there?”
There was no answer, and Etherton turned to his visitor.
“I thought I heard a step in that room,” he said. “That clerk of mine has a foot like a cat. Well, Sir Cheville, I see I shall have to give you my confidence, after all. Come this way, if you please.”
Etherton rose from his desk, motioned Sir Cheville to follow him, and crossed over to the opposite doorway.
He held the curtain aside; the visitor stepped through; he himself followed. And at that Letty turned, went down the private staircase, and crossing the garden and orchard climbed slowly up the hillside to Low Hall.
The comfort and pleasantness of the old house struck her painfully as she walked into its great stone porch. Any one entering it for the first time would have said that here was an ideal house filled with all that mortal could desire. And yet, as she now knew, there was something wrong, and some secret, and money owing to Marston Stanbury’s uncle which her father could not pay. And — she could only wait.